Blindsided
by tree979
Summary: Junior sees Guerrero for the first time after he gets out of jail. Hurt comfort-ish. Originally a one-shot but chapter three is now up. More to follow...
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own Human Target and I make no money from writing these fics.**

**Author's note: 'Blindsided' was originally just a one-shot but when I re-read it recently I had a few ideas as to what might happen from there. Also, reviewers were quick to point out that the incident in jail couldn't be the reason why Guerrero wore glasses as he wasn't wearing them when he found Junior and Katherine Walters at the cabin. Well, I know that! The incident was never intended to explain Guerrero glasses, it was just a way to render him temporarily vulnerable. Then it struck me that maybe Guerrero's temporarily helpless state was too interesting to just use in a one-shot, and so I'm picking up from where I left off. Chapter one is pretty much the original one-shot. Chapter two is where the new stuff starts. As always PLEASE REVIEW!**

* * *

"How is he?"

"Heavily sedated." The doctor said, dabbing at his bleeding lip with a wad of gauze. "For my sake as well as his."

Junior glared at the wounded doctor. He was in a small way relieved that Guerrero was himself enough to lash out .

"I can see you've doped him up doc." Junior said through gritted teeth. "But I need to know that he's going to be okay."

"Without knowing exactly what chemicals were thrown in his face, it's almost impossible for me to say what kind of long-term prognosis your friends is facing."

The doctor shrank away from Junior as the larger man's already stony expression darkened and took on a murderous intensity.

"Try anyway."

The doctor swallowed nervously. He was caught in an impossible situation. If he told the man his friend was going to regain normal vision and he didn't, the man would kill him. If he played it safe and told him his friend might never see again, the man may kill him out of anger anyway.

"I have done everything I can for your friend." He said, trying to sound efficient and confident. "I suspect the chemicals were a strong alkaline solution which I have neutralised. His eyes were irrigated almost immediately after the attack so everything that could be done to save his sight has been done. It is now just a matter of waiting to see how much damage his eyes have sustained."

Junior stood staring at Guerrero lying on the bed in the spare room of his apartment and wished for the hundredth time that day that he could get him to a real hospital with proper medical equipment. A real hospital was out of the question though, so he had to make do with this back alley quack that he'd not normally trust to sew up a simple through and through gunshot wound. Still, he had been a qualified doctor once upon a time, before the heroin addiction and malpractice suits.

"His other wounds are painful but not serious." The doctor explained. "A cracked rib or two, a lot of bruising and four broken fingers. I've patched him up as best I can. He must of put up one hell of a fight before they beat him."

"They didn't beat him." Junior replied. "He took down all six of the bastards even after one of them threw that shit in his face."

He was still staring intently at his friend and the doctor began to wonder if the man had been talking to him at all. He seemed so distracted that the doctor decided it would be best if he slipped away before he remembered he was there.

Junior waited for the doctor to leave before walking in and sitting in the chair beside Guerrero's bed. He lay on his back perfectly still with a wash cloth covering his eyes. He was so still that Junior couldn't be sure if the doctor's drugs had knocked him out.

"Hey dude."

"Hey. Didn't know if you were awake."

"Neither did I until I heard you come in. What did the doc say?"

Junior hesitated. He knew there was no point trying to bullshit Guerrero but the sight of his friend looking so small and helpless made it hard for him to just come out and say that he didn't know if he'd be alright.

"That bad huh?" Guerrero half smiled. "Am I gonna need a dog and a white stick or what?"

"I honestly don't know buddy." Junior admitted sadly. "I wish I could have gotten you out of there sooner."

"The old man came through for me in the end though."

Junior had been dreading this part of the conversation. There was no easy way to tell Guerrero that the old man refused to intervene, that had Junior not found out that Guerrero was rotting away in a Mexican prison and called on every contact he had he would still be there now. Junior wasn't surprised that their boss refused to lift a finger to help but he was furious with him for hiding Guerrero's predicament from him, for costing him the month it took to find him. If he had known from the start he could have gotten Guerrero out sooner and saved him from suffering the assault that may cost him his vision.

"He… I…. Kelly got you out, Guerrero." Junior said, referring to the attorney they both knew as the sister of one of their hacker contacts.

Guerrero seemed to take a moment to assimilate this information.

"Guess I shouldn't be surprised that the old bastard would just let me rot." He said. "I owe Kelly big time. She saved my life."

"You seemed to be holding your own in there." Junior said trying to lighten the mood.

"This was just a few punk inmates." He replied, indicating his injuries. "I could handle them but.."

"But what?"

"There's worse things than other inmates." Guerrero said quietly, rubbing at his wrists.

"Did the doc see that?" Junior asked. He hadn't noticed the angry welts on Guerrero's wrists, evidence that he'd spent much of his time in prison restrained. In places the skin was broken and weeping and although it didn't seem that the wounds were infected yet Junior didn't like the look of them.

"No." Guerrero said, pulling the sleeves of his shirt down to cover the red raw flesh of his wrists. He couldn't see Junior but he could feel his eyes staring at him.

"Why not?" Junior asked gently, although he suspected he knew the answer.

"I can't… It's personal dude."

Junior knew that was as much of an explanation as Guerrero could bare to give.

"I'm sorry…" he began.

"Don't. Just don't, Junior." Guerrero cut him off. Junior realised that he didn't even know how to end the sentence anyway. But he'd tried and Guerrero understood.

"I need to clean up your wrists. The wounds could get infected."

"They're fine." Guerrero insisted.

"Yeah well they won't be for long if you don't let me clean them up."

Reluctantly he allowed Junior to bathe his wounds. Junior tried to be as gentle as possible but he knew the real pain Guerrero was struggling with was of the emotional kind and he knew there was no way he could help him with that.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's note: Picking up from the original 'Blindsided'. Please review!**

* * *

It didn't take long for the Old Man to figure out why Junior was avoiding him. He knew exactly where Guerrero had been in his month long absence, and he knew Junior had taken it upon himself to secure Guerrero's release from the Mexican jail where the Old Man had been perfectly happy to let him rot indefinitely. Junior's loyalties needed to lie with him and him alone, and yet he had dropped everything to go to Guerrero's aid. This was a troubling development. Although Junior hadn't exactly disobeyed a direct order, he had knowingly acted against his wishes and that was dangerously close to outright rebellion. Junior wasn't a kid anymore and the Old Man knew that in a direct confrontation with the man he considered his son, there was no guarantee that Junior would fall back into line.

Joubert was only half-listening to Baptiste giving his report on the completion of his latest mission. He was more interested in watching the surveillance feed from Junior's apartment on his computer screen. Junior had managed to procure the services of a disgraced former doctor to tend to Guerrero's injuries, and from the man's demeanour he guessed that the prognosis may not be a good one.

He thought about what the implications of a blind and operationally worthless Guerrero might be, and how Junior would react to such a situation. Maybe having Guerrero permanently out of commission would work to his advantage, despite the loss of the man's considerable skills. If working alongside Guerrero were no longer an option he could make Junior work alone, perhaps even force him to sever all contact with everyone but himself. Junior didn't have a private life as it was but if Joubert isolated him completely from the other men in his employ, and the few other contacts that he permitted Junior to maintain, perhaps his control over the young assassin would become absolute.

Joubert knew that leaving Guerrero in a Mexican jail had only been a short term solution. One way or another Guerrero would have managed to extract himself from the situation, despite Joubert pulling a few strings with the Mexican authorities to make his detention as unpleasant as possible. It had been a test of Junior's loyalty to see how long it would take him to find Guerrero and what he would do when he did. Although he was disappointed that Junior had chosen to go behind his back to help him, he was not that surprised. But Guerrero's injuries, if they proved permanently debilitating, could be just the thing he needed to drive a wedge between the two men. Junior didn't know any other kind of life than the one Joubert had trained him for and if Guerrero was no longer able to be part of that world…

He realised that Baptiste had stopped talking and was looking at him somewhat impatiently, as if he were waiting for some kind of response.

"You eliminated your target?" he demanded. Baptiste tried to hide his disappointment that the Old Man hadn't heard a word he said. The assignment he'd just completed had proved to be considerably more complicated than had been anticipated and he'd hoped that his boss might acknowledge the extraordinary lengths to which he'd gone to complete his mission.

"Yes, and I…" he began but Joubert silenced Baptiste with a dismissive wave of his hand. It was a clear indication that he was unwilling to let him repeat the details of his mission. Baptiste clamped his mouth shut and tried to swallow his disappointment.

"Here," Joubert said, throwing an unmarked envelope across his desk. "A bonus. You may take a few days off but don't go too far. If I call, I want you back here in no more than six hours. Understood?"

Baptiste nodded and picked up the envelope, tucking it away in the pocket of his jacket. A bonus, although not unheard of, was a rarity for him but it wasn't the kind of reward he'd been hoping for. What he really craved was recognition from the Old Man, for even the smallest hint of approval that he showed Junior. He hesitated as the Old Man went back to watching his computer screen but he seemed oblivious to Baptiste's presence. Baptiste quietly backed out of the office, knowing that the envelope of cash in his pocket was the nearest thing to the Old Man's approval that he was likely to get.

Joubert barely even noticed him leave as he watched Junior tend to the abrasions on Guerrero's wrists on the screen in front of him. He wondered, not for the first time, whether he had made a mistake in keeping Guerrero alive. When he'd been incarcerated it would have been a simple matter to have him killed but destroying an asset as valuable as Guerrero was not a decision to be taken lightly and he'd hoped to have come up with an alternative solution to Junior's divided loyalties before Guerrero was released. Now he'd have to wait it out, to see what Junior did next, and that, he suspected, would depend on whether Guerrero recovered his vision. He felt confident that Junior would return to the only real home he had ever known, but how he broached the subject of his absence and Guerrero's rescue would tell him just how far from his control Junior had really drifted.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: Still don't own Human Target. Still waiting for those reviews folks...**

**Author's note: Don't really know where I'm going with this, I'm just enjoying writing Junior and Guerrero together. Hmm, there might be slash ahead. Any objections?**

* * *

Guerrero drifted off into a chemically induced sleep soon after Junior tended to the wounds on his wrists. Junior listened to the sound of his breathing as it slowed down to a barely audible snore and smiled at the reassuring familiarity of the sound. Guerrero always swore blind that he didn't snore and the sound was so muted that Junior could almost have let him get away with insisting that he was a silent sleeper, if it weren't for the fact that Guerrero always complained that Junior snored like an out-board motor whenever they had to share a room.

Junior sat in the chair beside Guerrero's bed and watched him sleep for a while, trying to focus on the fact that he'd found him and he was alive, whilst trying to avoid dwelling on the possibility that his friend's sight could be irreparably damaged. Guerrero was a lot of things to Junior; a comrade, a friend, a brother, but he hadn't realised quite how much he relied on him until he'd gone MIA on a job that the Old Man had refused to discuss.

He'd tried to get Joubert to tell him where he'd sent Guerrero and what his mission entailed but he always shrugged and told him that he'd be back when the job was done. Junior had pushed the issue as far as he dared, even refusing to accept assignments until he heard from Guerrero, but the Old Man still refused to give him even the slightest hint as to where he was or what he was doing. Guerrero had worked plenty of jobs on his own before but Joubert had never been so tight lipped about when he'd return and something about the situation just didn't sit right. He'd never actually worried about Guerrero's wellbeing before, and usually the very idea would be laughable, but the cold hard knot in Junior's stomach told him he had something very real to worry about and he decided to take matters in to his own hands.

But he'd found him though and, with Kelly's help, he'd got him out of that hellhole. He tried to ignore the nightmarish images that his mind seemed determined to torment him with of what Guerrero might have been though . He was too damn tired to think about why Joubert had just abandoned one of his most valuable men in a foreign jail. That was something he'd have to figure out after he'd caught up on some of the sleep he'd missed out on since Guerrero's disappearance, and when Guerrero was awake and alert enough to tell him what exactly the mysterious job that landed him in jail actually was.

Junior's eyes grew heavy and he was dimly aware that really he should crawl into his bed in the next room and finally get a decent night's sleep but he hated the idea of Guerrero waking up alone and not being able to see that he was safe in Junior's apartment and not still locked up. Also he found the sound of Guerrero softly snoring strangely comforting and eventually the familiar noise lulled him to sleep, slumped on the chair beside Guerrero's bed.

* * *

Junior woke with a start when something large and soft hit him hard in the face. He was reaching for his gun before he realised that the missile was merely a pillow that Guerrero had thrown from the bed.

"Dude, I'm blind not deaf. You couldn't fuck off to your own room and let me get some sleep?"

Junior rubbed his eyes and looked at his watch.

"If you've only just woken up, you've been out cold for the last nine hours," Junior said. He was genuinely surprised. That would mean he'd got at least six hours of sleep himself, which did at least explain the crick in his neck from falling asleep with his head at an odd angle.

"Well at least that quack did something right," Guerrero said begrudgingly. "He gave me the good stuff. I haven't slept like that in a while."

"How are you feeling?"

"Hungry."

"You're always hungry."

"So why ask?"

"Guerrero, you know that's not what I meant. The doc said you had four broken fingers and a couple of cracked ribs as well as… you know…the thing with your eyes."

"I'm pretty sure my ribs are only bruised," Guerrero sighed, as he resigned himself to the fact that Junior was likely to insist on a full rundown of his injuries. "The fingers of my left hand could be broken but unless that quack had x-ray vision I can't be sure of that. They don't feel too bad."

"I think the doc would have strapped them up for you if you hadn't have hit him."

Guerrero shrugged.

"What about your eyes?"

Guerrero was still lying down with the wash cloth covering his eyes. Junior saw him tense up in response to his question and wondered if Guerrero had even tried removing the cloth to see what kind of shape his eyes were in.

"Don't know," he muttered eventually.

"How do they feel?"

"Sore. Like my eyeballs have been rolled in a mixture of sand and hot sauce."

"Let me see."

Junior gently lifted the wash cloth from Guerrero's face making him take a sharp intake of breath. His eyes were still closed and Junior realised that he was reacting to light, which he took to be a good sign.

"Can you open your eyes?"

"They're kind of crusty," Guerrero complained and reached up as if to wipe the sleep from his eyes. Junior grabbed his wrist to prevent him rubbing his eyes.

"Hang on. That's probably not a good idea."

Guerrero grunted and dropped his hand. Moments later he heard the sound of Junior breaking the safety seal on some kind of jar or bottle.

"Okay, this is probably going to feel a bit weird but try and hold still."

He felt the bed dip as Junior sat down beside him and a slight change in the light burning through his aching eyelids warned him a split second before a cold liquid was carefully dripped over his eyes. Then he felt Junior carefully swab the line of his eyelashes with a q tip and carefully remove the dried crustiness that seems to be gluing his eyes shut. He worked slowly and gently, almost too gently as Guerrero had to fight the urge to shove him out of the way and just do it himself.

"Dude, can you hurry it up? That tickles."

Junior didn't reply but Guerrero suspected he was smiling. Apparently satisfied with clearing away the crud from Guerrero's left eye, he began to work on the right. Guerrero sighed impatiently but he knew Junior wouldn't be rushed.

Finally Junior soaked the corner of the washcloth in whatever solution he'd been using and gently wiped around Guerrero's eyes.

"You done?" Guerrero asked, sounding a bit more ungrateful than he'd intended.

"Think so."

Guerrero slowly peeled his eyes open and although the hot sauce and sand feeling was still there so too, apparently, was his vision. The first thing he saw was the blurred image of Junior's face.

"Well, I don't think I'm gonna need a white cane just yet," Guerrero said. "But it may be a while before I can wear contact lenses again."

Junior breathed a loud sigh of relief.

"You're lucky you weren't wearing your lens when they threw that shit in your face. It could have been a lot worse."

"Yeah, well if I had the damn lenses at the time they might not have gotten the drop on me but there's only so long you can wear contacts in that heat without saline solution."

"Well you're gonna have to wear glasses for a while at least. You've got to give your eyes a chance to recover."


End file.
